Friday, August 19, 2016

Open Access Journal: Archaeology & History in Lebanon: AHL

The Lebanese British
Friends of the National Museum is a private philanthropic association
established in London as a trust in 1993. It was created with the aim of
raising funds and providing technical support for the Beirut National
Museum at a time when the museum needed it most. LBFNM’s philanthropic
efforts began with the rehabilitation of the museum’s Conservation Laboratory, purchase
from the British Museum. Among other activities, LBFNM helped organize
the first post-civil war exhibition held at the National Museum,
Uprooted Heritage; and coordinated the exhibition Beirut: Uncovering the
past, which opened at the British Museum in March 1996 and lasted six
months before travelling to the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris.
Since 1995, LBFNM has
been publishing the journal Archaeology and History in Lebanon
(formerly National Museum News), which covers a variety of current
topics on Lebanon’s cultural history and archaeological past. Other
publication projects include the museum’s most recent catalogue Stones
and Creed (1999) and A Decade of Archaeology and History in the Lebanon
(2004).

The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.

The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.

AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.